Unofficial news and tips about Google

January 27, 2007

Open Gmail's Attachments in Google Docs

If you receive Microsoft Word files, Rich Text files or documents from OpenOffice and StarOffice, you can open them directly in Google Docs. Gmail has already had this option for Excel attachments.

It's a good idea to use it if you want to see more than just the text of the document (you can do this by choosing "View as HTML") or if you want to edit it, but you don't have an Office suite. The changes will be automatically saved, you'll have access to the previous versions and you can invite your contacts to edit the documents collaboratively. No more sending documents back and forth.

And a bonus tip: if you open the same attachment multiple times, Google Docs will offer you two options: open the existing document or a new copy of the attachment.

What about the opposite? Why is there no "Attach Google documents file" button when composing an email in Gmail? I know I can email a file from within google documents but it doesn't save the email in my sent box, use my signature, or save the email address to my addressbook.

Interesting bit of into about this feature: This feature does not show up on my mac; however, it shows up just fine if I log into my gmail account on a PC. I thought for a long time that maybe it was just my account or something along those lines. I'm not sure why this choice was made and I'd like to find out the reasoning behind this behavior.

@raviudeshi.com,And if the person is a known user of Google Documents I probably would. As a for instance lets say I have my resume on Google Documents, most HR folks want a word formatted resume sent to them. What I would like to see is an option in the Gmail compose window to attach a document from google documents. The option to invite them to view it would also be nice BTW.

Why this nice feature is not available in all language versions of GMail.I've started to use GMail when it was English-only. When Czech version became available I've switched to it thinking that it differs only in strings displayed. Everyone on the Internet speaking about this nice feature and nothing like that in my GMail made me trying to switch to English. Then I've seen that English version is completely different and Czech one seems more like demo version in comparison with it. So, since now I'll use Google services only in English. Czech is nice, but not nicer than function offered in English only :-(

That's ridiculous, there is no reason to not offer features on both sides of the system. How many times have I opened a form I have to fill in in google documents to just download it anyways so that I can attach it to a reply mail. it is extremely frustrating and clearly flawed design.

[i]imsai[/i] (over at MyOpera, in the browser forum...) wonders why this "functionality" doesn't appear (in Opera) in his Gmail, as he thinks it does when he uses Internet Explorer. (See his Forum post ... )

@Anonymous:The links don't appear in Gmail because Opera is not officially supported by Google Docs. Try to open a spreadsheet and you'll get a read-only version. Open a presentation in Opera and you'll get an error message: "Sorry, but this browser does not support web presentations."

Fine for receiving editable documents as attachments, but how does one SEND editable documents as attachments? Can a file with a PDF or JPEG extension be sent as an editable document under Open as a Google Document?

Whenever I attempt to open an attachment labeled as a "google document" I cannot open it. The options are "view" (not view at HTML document), download or open, none of which works. We can send a man to the moon but Google cannot provide basic functions such as opening a google document.